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"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."

If you look on the previous page, you'll see my repeated detailing of the Ace Combat: Assault Horizon game's port from GFWL to Steamworks. I imagine they'll either follow that or use whatever system they've implemented for DaS2.

Additionally, Microsoft are hardly in a rush to say that one of their services are going to be out of action. All we know is that clearly something happened and MS clearly let publishers/devs know that they would like any plans to remove GFWL from supported games to come to fruition. We also know a couple of hirings have been intended on utilising the PC space better and they've not been against releasing PC versions of games coming out on the 360/XB1/Win8 Shop.

So July 1 might mean nothing, it might mean everything. At this point the date is redundant because changes are already happening and are clearly continuing to do so.

There's a handful of games that to obtain on the PC and be able to play you'll need to pirate that have come from this scheme. But don't worry! Microsoft is committed to supporting the PC!

And there are countless more where this holds true just because they are old. Hell, plenty of dos and early windows games just don't work on modern systems (even with dosbox) because the technique used for the disc check doesn't work anymore (hello Star Crusader :p).

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

There is a substantial difference though between evolving technology and things becoming largely obsolete, and something having its functionality intentionally stopped. You also get old games being supported by GOG and I'm sure other legitimate digital shops.

It's still hilarious that a lot of the reasons early on into the 360's life that games weren't ported (or were and then tied to GFWL) was due to concerns of piracy, especially given that GFWL was so hideous it actually provoked more piracy.

There is a substantial difference though between evolving technology and things becoming largely obsolete, and something having its functionality intentionally stopped. You also get old games being supported by GOG and I'm sure other legitimate digital shops.

And we get these games being supported by the devs. If you don't like that a game isn't being ported, keep in mind that plenty of games still aren't on GoG

The fact that we actually can say that sites like GoG and the like are making old games playable legally is a WONDERFUL thing. But that wasn't true a few years back.

Does it suck that a lot of games won't be playable without a crack? Of course it does. I went through hell the other week to get the Dungeon Siege expansions working with Steam (or Dungeon Siege working with my computer period :p). But that is the price we pay as gamers. I have a bunch of NES cartridges in a closet that I will likely never play again. I COULD go through the hassle of setting up my NES and the like, but that is far more effort than just grabbing a rom would take. I played the hell out of Star Crusader when I was a kid, and I still can't get it working in dosbox legitimately. And I wanted to play Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate, and that was impossible between windows 98 and windows 7 :p

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

In the last few years there's been quite a push for all things retro, be it retro themed games or just the old games brought back to life. It's hardly a surprise that there's a clamour then for these games when people are going "...man, I really wanna play this game again!" Personally, I believe obtaining cracks for a game that is no longer obtainable legally and sees no likely situation of being so as being entirely grey territory, even if legally I accept otherwise.

The thing is, this conversation doesn't even need to be said with hindsight. Emulation has been happening for some time now. That Microsoft couldn't see this coming when they came up with the damn service is incredibly curious and shows just how much of a commitment they have to the PC service. If they really cared, truly, deeply, we'd actually see something from then.

Instead we're seeing developers scrambling to make their games playable. Or not, if you're Capcom.

In the last few years there's been quite a push for all things retro, be it retro themed games or just the old games brought back to life. It's hardly a surprise that there's a clamour then for these games when people are going "...man, I really wanna play this game again!" Personally, I believe obtaining cracks for a game that is no longer obtainable legally and sees no likely situation of being so as being entirely grey territory, even if legally I accept otherwise.

Yeah, that is the thing that tends to make most piracy discussions go to shit. No matter how you swing it, it is probably not legal (barring a possible EU law that I strongly suspect is almost always being misused :p). But that doesn't really matter. What matters is the person. If a person wants to pirate Godzilla (2014) because they don't want to pay money, feel free. if they want to pirate Game of Thrones because they don't have HBO in their country, whatever.

The thing is, this conversation doesn't even need to be said with hindsight. Emulation has been happening for some time now. That Microsoft couldn't see this coming when they came up with the damn service is incredibly curious and shows just how much of a commitment they have to the PC service. If they really cared, truly, deeply, we'd actually see something from then.

I don't see a real problem. Especially since GfwL was DRM, so building in a way to bypass the DRM just seems stupid

That being said, I would very much like it if MS just released a final version that people could install and that would do the bare minimum check (they can even internalize all the serial databases). Especially since they already have offline mode that works slightly worse than Steam's did for the longest time :p

Instead we're seeing developers scrambling to make their games playable. Or not, if you're Capcom.

Funny enough, it is MS again, but it wasn't the Windows devs' responsibility to make sure every single XP program worked in Vista and so forth. If it was super popular (as in, they got paid to by the people who own said product) they would test it, but otherwise it wasn't their responsibility.

Which I think gets in to the issue with Steam right now: Is it the responsibility of the vendor to make sure the product works? When I was a whee lad, I had to go back to Best Buy four times because all of the HL: Blue Shift discs were scratched. At the time, I blamed Best Buy, but I am smarter now and realize it was the manufacturer's problem (so Vivendi or whatever?). Best Buy didn't have a real problem swapping for a different box (this was before Steam). Similarly, I picked up a few shitty games from Best Buy, and I couldn't get a refund for those messes, since the problems weren't their fault/.

But now we have Steam and the first major death of a service (Impulse went to crap ,but nobody ever cared about that :p). is it Steam's responsibility to make sure a game works? Valve says no, and they seem to be standing by the policy of "If there is a big enough stink and one can argue false advertisement, we refund. If not, oh well"

The alternative being what Sony and MS (hee hee) do on the consoles: Every game and every patch has to go through some form of quality control, and Sony in particular have demanded devs fix gameplay related issues. That seems like a great idea, but that costs money to do, which means releases and patches cost money (see Phish's whingefest regarding not being able to fix his game).

Similarly, when can they stop offering support? Many devs move on and stop supporting their older titles, why can't storefronts? If MS really was leaking money with gfwl and everyone really does hate it, why should they be forced to continue to support it? And while I like the idea of them disabling it, there are legal issues there: What if Dev A doesn't like the idea of MS releasing the equivalent of a no-cd crack for their product?

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

Dawn of War 2 has been fully exorcised of the blight that is GFWL. This includes the original and Chaos Rising. The down-side of this process was the loss of LAN for some inexplicable reason, but hey, Steamworks! This isn't particularly new, but I figured whilst I was writing this, it was worth mentioning.

The big news is in the next game to have GFWL removed.

So some nice persony person found an update for Red Faction: Guerilla. It mentions the addition of Steam achievements. The question then follows with a wondering of if this is a sign of a shift to Steamworks. Fortunately, there's a dev response.

Couple of things then. Firstly, there will be a thing with Dark Souls during this month at some undisclosed point, in which saves and progress can be transferred from GFWL to Steam in lieu of the update DS is getting. So, DS owners, look alive.

Secondly, progress is being made on the Red Faction: Guerilla change. There's an open beta to test out the changes now, including the following:
- Matchmaking and Multiplayer via Steamworks
- No Games for Windows Live sign-in required
- Leaderboards via Steam
- Voice Chat via Steam
- Achievements via Steam
- Uses DX9 Renderer by default as DX10 created a lot of problems and resulted in performance drawbacks (that should also fix Win8 issues)
- At first launch the game attempts to migrate savegames from GFWL to the new system

Access by:
To access the beta please do the following:
Follow this guide http://ds.nordicgames.at/SteamBetaBranchGuide.jpg
Under Step 1 select of course the Red Faction Guerilla App
Password for step 4 is: nordicrfgbeta
The branch for Step 6 is named publicbeta

Secondly, progress is being made on the Red Faction: Guerilla change. There's an open beta to test out the changes now, including the following:
- Matchmaking and Multiplayer via Steamworks
- No Games for Windows Live sign-in required
- Leaderboards via Steam
- Voice Chat via Steam
- Achievements via Steam
- Uses DX9 Renderer by default as DX10 created a lot of problems and resulted in performance drawbacks (that should also fix Win8 issues)
- At first launch the game attempts to migrate savegames from GFWL to the new system

Access by:
To access the beta please do the following:
Follow this guide http://ds.nordicgames.at/SteamBetaBranchGuide.jpg
Under Step 1 select of course the Red Faction Guerilla App
Password for step 4 is: nordicrfgbeta
The branch for Step 6 is named publicbeta

Good god, Red Faction Gorilla is still being supported? Might have to register my copy just for kicks.

Couple of things then. Firstly, there will be a thing with Dark Souls during this month at some undisclosed point, in which saves and progress can be transferred from GFWL to Steam in lieu of the update DS is getting. So, DS owners, look alive.

Has there been any further news on this? November is now well and truly over, and I wouldn't mind starting over without GFWL ...

- UPDATE 11/25/14 -
We are working hard to finalize the process to move your Dark Souls: Prepare to Die saves and achievements to Steam. We need to conduct additional testing and we are now targeting December to begin this process. We'll have more information in the coming weeks. Thank you very much for your patience!